Slaughter Beach is a town in Sussex County, Delaware, United States. The population was 207 at the 2010 census, an increase of 4.5% over the past decade. It is part of the Salisbury, Maryland-Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. Slaughter Beach was founded in 1681 and incorporated in 1931. There are at least three stories of where the town's name came from: The first is that it was named after William Slaughter, a local postmaster in the mid-19th century. The second story claims “the name came from the horseshoe crabs that wash up on shore and die each year. They come near shore to shallow water to lay their eggs and the low tide strands them leaving them to die, thus the "slaughter." The third story, and the most contested source of the town's name, stems from a local legend which tells of a man named Brabant who, in the mid-1700s, "slaughtered" several indigenous inhabitants by cannon in order to prevent an impending massacre.